Written by Rachel Wenzlaff as part of the Young Journalist Program
For a man that says he does as little as he can, Dave “Beaky Sims” sure does a lot.
The drivers ultimately make the car accelerate, turn, brake and stop, but there would be no car to race without Dave Sims.
Simms has been the team manager for Risi Competizione for over a decade. He describes what he does simply as “looking out for the children” (children being the mechanics, drivers and staff he oversees.) But ask any of the “children” on the Ferrari team and they’ll tell you he does nothing less than everything. Whether it’s managing the relationship with the sanctioning body about rules and regulations or organizing the flight details of drivers, Simms handles it.
But Sims didn’t use to do everything.
Sims got into the racing business as a mechanic with Formula 1 in the 1960’s. Back then F1 was not nearly the organized sport it is today. There was far less money on the line and it was extremely dangerous.
In two years, from 1968 to 1970, two of Simms’s drivers died during a race: Jim Clark in 1968 and Jochen Rindt in 1970. It was a heartbreaking experience and not a good thing to be associated with as a mechanic, but in those early days of F1, it was just a fact of the sport.
Sims pushed on in the business, eventually working in practically every form of racing. Now, nearly 55 years later, he’s quite well known in the racing world and, as his peers claim, he’s become quite the ladies man.
He has a family in England where he’s from, but because of the travel demands of racing, he only gets to visit home about three times a year.
“I’m a bachelor here and a family man in England,” he said.
And he impresses the ladies all without any help from the teams that employ him. Despite working around flashy sports cars for more than half a century, he drives a Toyota and doesn’t really have any interest in driving anything like a Ferrari.
“I’m just sitting in traffic anyway; its not going to get me there any faster,” he said.
Family man or ladies man aside, one thing is certain, he is a racing man and always will be. He says he’s excited to go to work with the team everyday simply because “it’s the job. Its all I know.”